The End Begins
by Jenwryn
Summary: Severus/Lily. "Here he, himself, had caused all those things to happen even though he had never set foot near the place prior to this day..." Set after the events of October 1981.


**A/N:** the first draft for this story was written way back in 2007, during the Christmas holidays. At the time I had just re-read "Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows" for the second time and was full of all sorts of righteous anger on behalf of some of my favourite characters, ahaha. Goes without saying that I don't own them, however, nor the Potterverse at large. Also, much of what little dialogue is present in this story comes directly from J.K. Rowling's text. Eh, and at the time I was binging on U2 and the Foo Fighters. I'm sure that's relevant somehow.

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**The End Begins

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**

_I'm a revolving door; I've seen it all before._

_I will begin again, but I can't start until I've seen the end._

- The Foo Fighters, End Over End.

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**[November 1981]**

Severus Snape stood in front of the house, his hand upon the metal gate so that the golden-worded sign would rise from the garden, and shook uncontrollably. Here, then, it had happened. Here, then, a Death Eater had betrayed the one good thing in the whole universe; here, then, an evil wizard had brought death upon the one person, the one creature, the one witch, that he had ever truly, unquestioningly, loved.

Here he, himself, had caused all those things to happen even though he had never set foot near the place prior to this day.

The house rose up in front of him, a simple cottage like all the rest in the street. Dust and smoke still meandered from its remains, in the autumn wind, mingling with leaves that skipped around in the sky above where the roof ought to have been, as though a broken building, a broken existence, were a perfectly ordinary sight to a floating leaf. But then, he supposed that it was, so much as leaf might be considered to view one thing or another.

How many buildings had been burnt, bent, broken, blasted apart, and then the Dark Mark left to hang in the sky above them, before this time?

That much at least, if he had understood it correctly, Lily Evans had been spared. With the Dark Lord apparently destroyed instantaneously, there would have been no time for that spell of dire triumph.

He supposed that much she would have appreciated.

Severus' lips curled into a sneer at the idiocy of his own thoughts.

_Ah, certainly, I'm convinced that that will be such a comfort to her given that she's dead, Severus, you incalculable fool._

The wizard turned his dark eyes back to the sign and surveyed it bleakly. Who had put that there so quickly, before their graves were barely even finished? Had it been Dumbledore? Perhaps…

Knife-edged tendrils of anger curdled inside him at the thought of Dumbledore.

Severus' own words rose up inside his head: _"I thought… you were going… to keep her… safe…"_

And nothing as comfort in response, no, nothing to acknowledge that he had just lost the meaning to his life. Nothing to suggest that Dumbledore – Dumbledore, who was always raving so blindly, loudly, moronically, about The Generally Vast Importance Of Love Over Everything – had _ever _loved himself or had so much as an inkling of what it felt like to have it snatched away from your trembling hands and your soul, your shattered soul, plunged into black perdition.

Snatched away, and you to blame.

No. Nothing as comfort. Just cold logic, rational accusation._ "She and James Potter put their faith in the wrong person. Rather like you, Severus. Weren't you hoping that Lord Voldemort would save her?"_

Lord Voldemort – _Lord – _all these years of calling him _Lord_ – all these years of devotion and now he had proved himself the destroyer of the very essence of his most-devoted-Severus' inner being.

Destroyer. Destroyed. Destruction.

Nothing but pain and haze and fogged-up thoughts, and Dumbledore's voice, cool and thin and reasonable, and speaking words, words rendered half-meaningless by the sheer utterance of them.

_"Her boy survives."_

Her boy survives.

Severus' hands gripped at the gate until the metal tips of the wire, which made up its inner mesh and curved along the rim unevenly, burrowed into the skin of his fingers. Blood appeared in small dark specks but he didn't notice. Her boy. _Her _boy. Her _boy. _

Loathing, black like thick tar, washed up inside him. The boy was to blame for her death just as much as Severus was. Himself and the Potter spawn; double murderers of Lily Evans.

Severus tried to feel some sympathy for the child. It had been left, no doubt screaming and terrified, in the half-demolished house, death and devastation all around it and, at fifteen months, would possibly be old enough to understand that something awfully, awfully, awfully bad had happened, but not old enough to work out more than the fact that its world had collapsed and affection had flown out the window—

But Severus found no sympathy. He found nothing but hate and revulsion.

Hate and revulsion, and the knowledge that his own life had been handed on a blood-stained platter to that child just as surely as if he were a House Elf and the Potter whelp his Master.

Severus wanted to scream or curse or rage, but instead he just stared at the cottage with hollow eyes before turning and walking slowly down the road, away from it, never looking back. Away from her home, away from her grave, away from the only thing that had ever lit the spark of warmth and smiles inside him.

He could begin his life again now, because his life was over.

He walked away; towards his own destruction.


End file.
